Выбрать главу

we gazed in the heavenly blue

we noticed that populousness is bluer:

roofs fences

cars

heavy colours like a waterproof tarp

no one from our family

has been in these lands

since nineteen sixteen

glare of white handkerchiefs

spread wide

on the uncharted waters

non op posing

non meta morph osing

non harvest table

non stop able

*

life, you are a gash in need of stitching

death, you are a crust that yearns for filling

*

those who carry in their mouths, at first with care, heads with seeing eyes

those who touched newspaper print in their heads, as mother said never to do, never, wash your hands

those who rip apart in flight, carrying from nest to nest, smearing on the glass

attempt to mount the blunt-snouted body on a set of wheels,

set it trundling, throat outstretched and spouting fire

yes, them and these, too

but actually more these

for them conscripts spread their green arms wide

like a tablecloth plentifully spread

lie heaped at their feet like birch logs

to please the valkyries

at the harpies’ hearts desire

to the bayan’s thrum

the accordion’s reveille

and o, those children’s voices, singing where once there was a dome

in the soiled field

surrounded by corn and scarecrows

*

not on the earth but above or below

war’s deep grunt

producing slimy rivers of sweat

its hand feels for the gut

and we stagger

carry ourselves through the darkness

and mother demeter mithering in the muck

and anguish of the fields

hears from below: mother fuck

yet the sky might be brightening, or so it feels

and mother hecate comes out for a smoke

from the back street

from the foul black streets from the pecking fowl

the puddles of spilt milk

the earth lying like a kitbag

behind enemy lines      give it tongue

mother mary hurries

but hasn’t yet come

*

in a great and strong wind

a still small voice

she who cradles leviathan in her hands like the infant

and she who rises above the rye

all are present for this, as it happens

they watch, they steadily

unspeaking

as the ice in the ice house and the tear in the bottle come of age

as the soil tastes the first weight of the rain

as the ice-stoves send out blocks of

smoking death

in the big brother house a fight opens like a flower

women in flip-flops

fixated

shut the fuck up why don’t

spring in the recruiting office

knee jerk, stethoscope down the spine

picking out the shaggy the short-legged the sinewy

under matron’s watchful eye

how the thick plaits of herring stream away

the lines of tanks on bridges flash in the sun

a waiter’s flourish reveals a pitiful morsel

shivering, drizzled in salt, underdone

and over there is everything that I kiss from afar

that I love to smithereens

all of it still shouting alleluia

but no respite from the shameful dream

serpents and all deeps

tin soldiers at the city walls

all the ranks of angels

nanny lena digging vegetables

snow like wool and hoarfrost like ashes

throat like spindrift, legs like a foal

heart thrust through the noose

like a button through a button hole

save us from the right hand of falsehood

a memory

won’t save us

lies in the ashes

biting its own tail

he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man

nor the strength of a horse

*

like the tailor who sews

not the straitjacket

(which from childhood has begged to sit up

woken from the canvas)

but the pattern

cuts on the bias

and the dress isn’t tight

just itchy

like a court proceeding

down the long hospital corridor

with a heavy trolley

handing out the tightly wrapped packages

the little living weights of verdicts

three per cord, ladies

like when in a moment’s confusion you spit out a barbed word

and it lodges in a treebody

or the body of a comrade

or a friendlip

and the line

goes taut

fish hooks a fish

like a mound

under a snowdrift

means nothing

writing on a tomb

sees no one

writing on a stone

nothing, we read

it not

but it is

2015

FROM Kireevsky

(2012)

from Girls, Singing

*

Young aeronauts, floating to land

From under the gentle maternal wing

Of the heavens, leading by the arm

An injured airman, met by their mothers

And alongside, on the vapour streams

Rides a cripple on his wheels

In a gilded shirt made of tears.

The aeronauts crowd round the cripple

They know themselves in him

And bring their mothers to greet him

And give him bread and wine

Around his trolley they drape a wreath

Of buttercups, memorise his face

And their thrilled tears fall

Then slowly, slowly they tiptoe away

In sadness for their own youth.

*

In the white white sky

Where cold space dilates,

Wretched of the earth,

He rose, and sold his fate.

Take it if you want it

Invest all your bonds

In the ramshackle, the matchwood

Of my once-used hands.

I have no body now

Stamped skew on the page

You can see the blue hills

Through my rib cage.

With the rising of the moon

With the wearing of the rain

I bobbed in the steppe

Like a boat on a chain.

I’m hail, its advancing stutter

A movement sans legs, sans hooves

Come buy my life-clutter.

But give back the life I used.

This posthumous glory

I’d give it up in ten

(It swells like the dropsy)

For a fag like we smoked back then.

*

Mother and Father didn’t know him,

Nor his young bride

When the captain returned

From beneath the bruised ice

Somewhere they’re toasting victory

The piano plays quick and then slow

He dragged the tail end of winter

Left circles in the snow.

A bulb is alight in the Office

But the residents’ list is blank

Outside the expanse is throbbing

Battalions of dead in a flank

Everything’s on fire, he said

Where I was, everywhere I look

Lentils boiled up in the pan, he said,

With the empty spine of a book

No boats came into harbour

Only a whistle reached land

Now the submariner grieves

For a signaller who blew on his hands

My gut is weighty with water

I’m a fearsome frozen thing

So many tank turrets entangled

In the fine net of Spring

I put on the spare wheel

Burned papers, destroyed every trace

Allow me to register as resident

And pass to my dwelling place

But the courtroom is silent

His papers lie crushed in the ice

And I’ll never get to witness

Him standing – a stranger to his wife.

*

What is that sweeper, mother,

Who lives on the cellar floor?

His name shivers and splinters

I don’t remember it anymore.

He barely comes out to the yard,

Wretched man in his underground room,

To chip at the moaning ice

To scrape with a broom

When I dress for work in the morning

And leave the house at dawn

Or when I undress in the evening

And place my shoes in a drawer